The Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (CDPDJ) says it had to close dozens of complaint files for racist remarks because of the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of comedian Mike Ward.
Over the past year, the Commission closed 194 complaint files following the Court’s judgment. Nearly three-quarters of these cases (73%) concerned remarks of a racist nature.
“For us, such remarks remain totally unacceptable, although we can no longer legally investigate several of these cases,” lamented the President of the Commission, Philippe-André Tessier, during a press briefing on Friday.
In October 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of comedian Mike Ward in the dispute between him and Jérémy Gabriel. Mr. Ward was challenging a judgment of the Human Rights Tribunal which had found him guilty of discrimination because of remarks made in his shows on the handicap of Jérémy Gabriel. However, in its judgment, the highest court in Canada had argued that the Human Rights Commission interpreted too broadly the notion of dignity provided for in the Charter of Rights.
” [Les propos litigieux] exploit, rightly or wrongly, a malaise in order to entertain themselves, but they do little more than that”, observed the Court in its judgment.
Collateral damages
“We have rigorously analyzed the judgment to conclude on the need to refocus the processing of complaints related to the remarks alleged as discriminatory”, advances, for its part, the Commission in its report.
At a press conference, its president deplored the collateral damage linked to the decision. “It has human consequences for these people to no longer have access to these remedies, and we are sorry about that”, he argued, after stressing that he nevertheless had the obligation to respect the Court’s interpretation.